Epson Home Cinema 8350 Projector Review

October 6, 2010 - Art Feierman

Epson Home Cinema 8350 Projector Calibration and Settings

We calibrate each home theater that is reviewed. The Epson Home Cinema 8350, of course, is no exception. Working with a pre-production projector that is 2nd generation (based on the discontinued 8100 UB), rather than an all new unit, this Home Cinema 8350 behaved admirably. No way really to tell it wasn’t full production from normal operation and viewing. For that same reason, unlike a first of a series projectors, this is a stable platform, and issues like color table changes should be well behind us.

Ours is a pretty standard calibration, there’s always more done to be done by the certified “hi-end” calibrators. Our calibrations, including the Epson Home Cinema 8350, are normally limited to a grayscale calibration, along with brightness, contrast, color saturation, etc. Only in very special circumstances will we calibrate the individual colors, in which case we discuss why.

Epson Home Cinema 8350 Color Temperature

Before we provide our settings, let’s see what we started out with: Pre calibration, these are the color temperatures over the grayscale range:

Color Temp over IRE Range (Pre calibration):

Cinema:

30 IRE

6495

50 IRE

6539

80 IRE

6492

100 IRE

6517

That’s as good as many projectors measure after calibration. Impressive!

Epson Home Cinema 8350 Basic Settings

In addition to calibrating Red Green and Blue for a correct grayscale balance (6500K), there are a number of other settings that come into play. Typically Contrast and Brightness (white balance and black balance), need to be done first. Color saturation and gamma also need adjustment.

Below are the settings Mike came up with, as he started the calibration with these controls. (default values are in parenthesis):

Cinema

Dynamic

Living Room

Natural

Contrast = (0)

0

0

-1

0

Brightness= (0)

1

1

2

1

Color Saturation=

0

-10

-5

0

Tint= (0 for all)

0

0

0

0

Color Temp (default)=

6500

6500

9300

6500

Epson Home Cinema 8350 Post Calibration Grayscale

Calibrated color temps, 20 – 100 IRE: The first set was from our calibration of the engineering sample. The one below it, from the full production Home Cinema 8350. In other words, the second set is pretty much what you can expect. You will notice it is a tighter set of numbers than the original sample, and that’s why I’m showing both:

NOTE: Mike reports that while the average gamma is a little low, it’s consistently around 2.2 in the lower IRE ranges, which is where it needs to be. Only at 80 and 90 IRE does in drop below 2.0.

The Epson gamma controls are very flexible, with a number of presets and a gamma “equalizer” (think like a 10 band (octave) audio equalizer). You should be able to raise the gamma just in the 80 and 90 IRE ranges, with the controls.